


The Coriander Cafe

by guileheroine



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Academia, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Teachers, Developing Friendships, F/F, Flirting, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:55:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29275803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guileheroine/pseuds/guileheroine
Summary: Professor Izumi has lunch with her quirky new colleague.Written for the Winter ATLA Femslash Week.
Relationships: Izumi/Kya II (Avatar)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 30
Collections: Winter ATLA Femslash Week 2021





	The Coriander Cafe

**Author's Note:**

> a bit of a nebulous setting for this fic - modern/no bending, but keeps the avatar geography
> 
> also @guileheroine on tumblr and twitter

“Come in,” Izumi called. As she did, she reached over to lift the hefty pile of new books off the spare chair and deposit them on the desk instead.

When the door of her office swung open and Kya peered in, Izumi wasn’t sure what to feel, and it showed on her face. _Call me Kya :)_ , the new professor had signed off on their last email this morning. 

“I—Kya, hello,” she said, smiling curtly. “Please sit. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” 

Kya was irreverent. Izumi knew that much because she had postponed their official first meeting last minute, and had the gall to send her a smiley-faced email about it. ‘Duty calls’, she’d written, duty being that her elderly mother needed urgent company to the market downtown because they had a rare shipment of her favourite fruit. 

_Duty_ , Izumi would have thought, called her to meet with her new colleague—technically her superior, no less—and one who had a schedule tighter than the smile she wore now.

Kya read the tension easily, barely a second into the room; maybe she had expected it. She uncrossed her arms as she sat, but rather than steeling, her polite smile went up into her eyes, and Izumi was unexpectedly disarmed.

“Thank you. And thanks for being so understanding about yesterday. My mom! She’s getting on in her years, you know. But she’d still clock me if I stopped her from getting her naseberries.” 

To her own surprise, Izumi’s irritation ebbed. It was quite nice to be thought of as _understanding_. 

Kya’s eyes fell on the stack of books Izumi had shoved onto the desk, thick and shiny and all identical. “Yours? Congratulations...” Izumi watched her eyebrows spring up as she read the title: _Ethonogenesis in the Fire Nation Archipelago_. “Professor! You’re in palaeoanthro—?”

‘Professor’—Izumi didn’t like the way Kya said it, like she was _humouring_ her with her casual genuflection. It made her feel haughty, which she knew all too well, and disliked (most of the time). _Call me Izumi_ , she thought a little coldly. 

“Oh no, I wrote the foreword,” she said. The rest hung in the hair silently: ... _being one of the preeminent scholars in Fire Nation history and all._ “And please, call me Izumi.” 

Kya grinned. “So, what did you think of the book? Any good?”

Izumi wondered vaguely if this was a test. Kya was a jack of all trades from the looks of her records, but anthropology was her mainstay. Izumi was a busy woman and she had read as much of the manuscript as she needed to to write the foreword and get her name on the thing. It was possible Kya had inferred this and had something up her sleeve to trip Izumi up—she seemed like the type. Izumi’s stomach rumbled. Finally tracing her irritation to this, and to give her a moment to think, she said, “Why don’t we talk about this over lunch? I’ll show you the department cafeteria, it’s just down the stairs, as a matter of fact…” 

The cafeteria had a name in one of the obscure Air nomad languages—

“Ah. It means ‘coriander’, but I’m sure you knew that, Prof—Izumi,” Kya said casually, catching herself. 

Izumi nodded as noncommittally as possible. Kya ordered the day’s special, one of the flaky naans that brought people from all over the RCU campus here on Fridays, plus some vegetable curry. She offered to buy Izumi’s in recompense but Izumi declined. If she accepted it would be conceding her irritation, which she certainly didn’t want to do. 

“”So, the book,” Kya said, once they had sat down. 

Right. “You know,” Izumi said diplomatically, “it’s always so exciting to see the light other experts can shine on a topic of personal interest. I decided to wait till the holiday to finish it, so I could really give the book its due attention.” 

Smirking, Kya inclined her head. She wiped the plate with her naan and popped it in her mouth. “Well played.” 

Izumi bit back her own smirk. “Thank you. Now, how have you been getting on so far? Any problems, questions?”

When Kya first knocked on her office door, Izumi had been scrolling through a small backlog of emails from students requesting to be squeezed into Kya’s class, presumably after hearing about just the one session that had occurred so far. It might have been a part of what set her on edge. Izumi was very well respected, but she wasn’t sure she ever inspired that kind of _hunger_ amongst students. Next Friday, she decided, she would pop in to _Travel and Trade Across the Mo Ce Sea, 3000 B.G. to 1000 B.G_., just to see what all the fuss was about. 

In the intervening week, she drew up Kya’s resume again. Kya had been all over the place, and she taught a different class every time. Her post as a Visiting Professor here was a year-long contract. _Birth and Death in Air Nomad Culture, Anthropology of the Elements, Folklore in the Era of Fen An…_ You had to be a fraud or a genius to be this prolific—unless she was seriously coasting, the woman had range. It was clear she could have been much further up the ladder if she wanted. 

When Kya spotted Izumi at the back of the lecture hall on Friday morning, she waved and winked. Izumi pushed her glasses up her nose and tried not to roll her eyes. But she did smile, belatedly. 

The class itself had her enraptured. If she was honest, that was the rarest thing these days. Kya had a knack for interpretation that made Izumi wonder about her perspective on matters beyond the characteristics of the Hing Wa Island social contract a thousand years ago. And still, she found herself noting down several things to look up later.

Izumi waited until the last student had filtered out before pushing down the lid of her laptop and rising. 

When she noticed her approach, Kya crossed her arms good-naturedly. “So? Did I pass my evaluation?” Her eyes shimmered with humour.

“Only just,” Izumi ribbed, pointed and dark.

“Oh, thank goodness. Now come on, if you please—nothing to get my stomach going like rambling on for an hour.”

“Lunch?” Izumi hadn’t planned for it. Last week had been nice, though. 

“Yes! Shall we?”

Kya went for the naan again, and Izumi followed suit. She felt like a student in an office hour, pestering Kya with all her burning questions, but Kya met them with both insight and interest. Afterwards they went in for some dessert, shortbread and a shared pot of tea. It was Friday, after all. A ferocious wind swirled the autumn leaves outside, and they were loath to go out into it, and to cut the dialogue short before it reached its natural conclusion.

When it did, Izumi regarded Kya over her mug for a moment and finally changed the topic. “So why Republic City?” She said, taking a long sip.

Kya scoffed like it was a silly question. “The job, duh.” RCU _was_ the best research university in all Four Nations, though Ba Sing Se University still held its ancient prestige. 

Izumi was undeterred. “But you could have gone anywhere. You _do_ go everywhere.”

“Well, Mom decided to move up here and stay with my brother’s family for a little while. And I thought, _hey_ , if they’re all in one place…” 

“Oh, that must be cosy.” 

Kya’s hands came around her mug as she shrugged. Even in the new chill, she only wore a thin sweater and an even thinner scarf tied up in a loose, unfamiliar style around her shoulders. “It’s a nice change of pace, I’ll give you that.” 

Her smile was wistful, the corners of her eyes crinkled. Izumi held a warm knot in her stomach, before washing it over with the last of her tea.

“I have a meeting in ten,” she said. Her hand clenched around the handle of the mug for a second. “Until next week, then?”

Kya’s smile widened. “Better put it in your calendar, busyboots.”

By next week, Kya professed she was bored of the naan.

“I thought you were vegan,” Izumi said, bemused. 

“Vegetarian, actually,” Kya corrected, without looking up from her chicken salad. Then she winked. “But not on Fridays.” 

“Right. I’d show you the other cafes on campus, but this is the best one,” Izumi said. “Lucky for us. Anyway,” she gestured with a chopstick, “the barter system. I thought Hing Wa Island had moved on to shell currency eons ago.”

“Not totally. I mean, that’s what the chauvinists wanted to believe, right? That there was nothing so primitive as that anywhere in the Agnisphere mercantile systems by that point. But it’s not like the islanders cared, they’d been bartering for hundreds of years just fine… Actually, there’s a great book from a few years ago that touches on it, but it’s got a lot more on Red Sand Island...” 

Kya was recounting the lecture she had just given, at Izumi’s behest. All through the long morning that she had just spent collating reading lists, Izumi wished she was back in the lecture hall from last Friday.

“Oh?” She raised her brow, her interest piqued further. “My son would be interested in that. He’s stationed near Red Sand Island.”

Kya nodded appreciatively. “Good for him, _gorgeous_ place.” 

“So I hear! I’ve been thinking about visiting him once the semester is over,” Izumi said. “He’s always asking me to come so he can show me around.” She found herself eager to hold onto this line of conversation. “Do you… do you have a family?” As soon as it had come out of her mouth, it felt bald and clumsy. It’s not like Kya never made allusions to her family. “...I mean, you know, kids and all that,” Izumi hurried on. 

Suddenly, the question also felt strangely make or break; Izumi took a casual sip of water to distract herself.

Kya snorted, wiping her mouth with a napkin. Some of her cocoa-coloured lipstick came off onto it. Izumi got the impression that she might have minded the question if she wasn’t so used to it. “Me? Not in a million years. I had a girl once who pretty much split up with me over it. But tell me about yours.”

“A boy and a girl,” Izumi said belatedly, busy tamping down the odd excitement swelling in her chest. “What am I saying? They’re both well past grown up now. Yes.” 

Kya laughed. “Well, I’d skip to that part if I could. Don’t get me wrong, I love my nieces and nephews, but there’s a reason mom and I are in our own apartment. I’d get a pet if I wanted something in my house twenty-four seven.” 

“You know,” Izumi began, putting her elbows on the table. She smiled freely, almost irrepressibly. “I’ve actually been thinking about that. I like my house much better without my ex-husband in it, but, well, it’s a big house for one person.”

Kya sat back, stretching and folding her arms behind her head. Her tone was gently probing when she spoke. “That why you’re in your office all the time?”

Izumi’s guard didn’t come up in response, but rather, an unexpected playfulness did. She exhaled shortly, eyes narrowing. “I’m in my office all the time because I’m the head of an understaffed department.”

“Touche. Okay.” 

The week after, Kya didn’t come to lunch. Her mother had had a fall or something—she’d be fine, Kya assured, but she needed to take her to the doctor’s for a check up just in case. _Lucky you, you get to stay in your office!_ She had texted. Izumi looked at it for altogether too long, smiling. Then she bought her tea and her banh mi to go and walked around with it for her lunch break, watching the fall colours around the campus.

_We could make up for it this weekend_ , she messaged later, and regretted how forward it was almost immediately. Kya inspired that kind of boldness, but not everyone could pull it off like her.

_But stay home if your mother needs you, of course_ , she added, probably going too far in the other direction. When she read it back, it sounded like a stern teacher, but frankly, she was more comfortable there.

_Yes ma’am!! :),_ came the reply.

It rained for the whole week after. The cafe was more crowded than usual with everyone packing indoors. They took the only free spot, a table for two that was too cramped for both lunch trays, having to pull their plates practically into their laps.

The cafe had run out of vegetable curry, so Kya improvised a falafel wrap with her naan (which they always made copious amounts of). She tore a mouthful off for Izumi.

“It’s amazing, try it. If I do say so myself!”

It was memorable indeed. After a swig of her water, Izumi asked, “So how’s your mom?”

“The tests aren’t back yet, but she’s good. Hardy. This damn mid-term gave me more trouble than her this week, being honest now.” 

Izumi grinned. Kya had been marking papers all week. It was her least favourite part of the job. “Then let me distract you,” she said, “So I was reading one of your old papers earlier this week, on the sky burial tradition of the Western Air Nomads...”

Kya was genuinely flattered, a moment of rare astonishment on her face. It was a look Izumi had never seen on her, and one that she knew she wanted to induce again in an instant. 

“Out of your busy week! Oh, man. What did you think?”

Izumi looked at her seriously. “Probably the most interesting thing I’ve read all year. Sensitive. Shrewd. Definitely the most curious.” She hoped she didn’t seem too imploring; she did have _some_ pride left. 

“Wow!”

She went on, after holding Kya’s warm gaze for a moment. “Have you been to the world history museum in town? The Four Nations Museum. They have something on the sky burial. I think you’d have a thing or two to say about some of their displays.” She glanced up from her plate with a sardonic start of the brows. “I know I did. I’ve been meaning to go again since they expanded.”

In the next moment, an idea passed between them at the same time, a little ripple; Izumi knew from a glance at Kya’s eyes. Next Friday was a public holiday, and they wouldn’t be lunching here. 

Kya was the first to lean forward. “So. How about that date then?”

Izumi nearly dropped her chopsticks. “The—”

“The one you kindly postponed for me last week.” Kya laughed loud, without unkindness. 

When she put it like that, Izumi couldn’t help her own chuckle from bubbling up. Her cheeks smarted, but she leaned into the almost pleasant nuisance of it. “Alright then. The date.” 

Friday couldn’t come soon enough, as always.


End file.
